Can you use the simplified workflow on a kanban board for a project that uses a specified workflow in Jira?

[Miki Reynolds]

I'm looking to implement a kanban board for backlog grooming. We currently use Jira for active sprints and have a specified workflow so that all tasks flow through the workflow as needed.

What I'd like to do is import this project into my Kanban board (filtering so it only displays the "Not Yet Started" tasks) and be able to apply the simplifed workflow so I can manually move them through the various stages of backlog review. I won't be changing any statuses on the tasks, as I'd like to reserve those for when these tasks are actually being worked on in a sprint by a developer.

Is it possible to apply the simplified workflow to a project in a kanban board, but have it still use the default workflow in Jira?

Thanks,

Miki

[Justin Alex Paramanandan · Accepted solution]

The concept of the Simplified Workflow in GreenHopper is to provide an easier management for agile teams in their daily scrum management. However, the workflows in GreenHopper are tied to the JIRA architecture; much like how projects, screen, fields etc are.

Hence, you can only choose one workflow for a project and the Kanban board. I believe you can further modify your workflow for your backlogged items to have variable transitions for your backlog grooming sessions.

[Miki Reynolds]

Thanks, Justin. Do you know where I can find more information on the variable transitions for backlog grooming purposes?

[Justin Alex Paramanandan]

I don't think that the transitions are there in JIRA as a default; you would have to create them manually to your workflow and map these transitions to the steps and statuses (might need to create new ones on this as well).

Here's how I visualize the backlog grooming process. I created the following workflow that would assist me in my product backlogs:

The statuses and steps are created in order to utilize two things: the Kanban board (planning porcess) and Scrum board (development process). Hence, it is important to configure the workflow transitions accordingly.

Once the above has been done, I further create and configure a Kanban board:

Any new stories would definitely be in open status, so once it is ready for grooming, the Scrum Master would then move this to the middle column and allow the team to groom the stories.

Finally, when the stories are groomed and ready for development, they can then be planned for upcoming sprints.

For development, I would just use the Scrum board:

Notice that all the issues that are ready for sprint planning are shown in the backlog. Now I've placed three stories that are ready for development. To configure the Scrum board, the statuses need to be mapped to their respective columns:

And once this has been done, the Work section of the Scrum board would look like this:

The example I've provided may be a bit rough off the edges, but I believe that this is a basic outline for a backlog and scrum team. Hopefully, this would help a bit in your design for backlog grooming in JIRA + GH.